How to avoid being phished

Welcome to my tutorial designed to help people like you from falling for a new threat that being phishing.

Phishing is a derivative of the word fishing, its where a fraudster puts a webpage that looks identical to a well known bank or paypal page.  Sometimes they are also aimed at social networking sites or online games.

The fraudster will then send out hundreds or even thousands of "bait" emails also looking very formal asking you to click the link in the email to update your information due to a server crash or maintanance.   The email usually contains a link that is identical to the impersonated website.  this is called masking the link.  If you were to move your mouse over the link without clicking it you can see in the bottom left of the screen a completely different link shows up.

If the link was clicked it will take you to the fraudsters site, which looks like the banks or whoever it came from.  It will ask you to enter your login details, personal information and even credit card numbers.  If you have fallen into this trap and have entered your details as soon as you hit the send button it will all be forwarded to the attacker.  Then they can freely empty your account or apply for loans and other goods in your name.

There is now a good website called phishtank.com  it a community driven website.  Where people go and submit suspicious web sites you can see if your link is on there or report the one you were sent this helps others to combat against this kind of fraud.

A point worth remembering is that no bank or paypal or any other site for that matter will send you an email asking you to click a link to login and update your details.